Travel, Pubs, Music

I stopped in a long street of a village, nondescript till you get to the eastern edge, which contains a couple of attractive looking pubs, the church, and some well marked walks.

In the Beer Guide pub It was good to see craft lager from nearby(ish) Wrexham, but I went for a Congleton classic, a brewery with outlets in Stockport’s finest suburb, but rarely seen in the free trade these days. It was too warm(NBSS 2.5), but the enthusiasm of Peter the barman made up for it. “Enjoy your nice refreshing Bitter” he said with an odd accent that could have been Arabic. He knew his beers.

I was a bit concerned at how quiet it was at 5, but by the time I returned from my walk an hour later the place was buzzing with a mainly senior clientele typical of the area’s pubs.

The walk was unplanned, I just followed a well-signposted path through fields of cows towards a point of interest, immortalised by Paddy McAloon, that just seemed to get further away as I ploughed onward. Classic England.

Extraordinary, I lived in Goostrey ( and chaired the Parish Council!) until four years ago.
The satellite dish is of course Jodrell Bank.
The Crown was formally a Marstons managed house, run by an ex Stoke City footballer for a number of years. He then took it on a lease; unfortunately things took a turn for the worse & he ultimately dropped dead in his kitchen of a heart attack.
A Cheshire Pubco took a free of tie lease . The two guys running the company fell out ( one of them is a particularly unpleasant character) and one of them kept the Crown plus another pub.
The Red Lion was a Tetley managed house in the past, as Tetley Walker experimented with an informal food orientated offer. It was sold a number of years ago. The black and white cottages in Martin’s photo are opposite the Red Lion and are listed.
There is an enormous amount of new housing going up in the village ( although nowhere near as much as in Holmes Chapel), with the housing stock increasing by 40% over 2/3 years .